Robert Greenblatt

Robert Greenblatt, enteraintainment chief for NBC, bemoaned the network’s fall rating woes on Thursday, but expressed hope that the beleaguered network can regain some mojo with its midseason lineup.

“We had a really bad fall, worse than I hoped for, but about what I expected,” Greenblatt told reporters gathered here for the Television Critics Association winter press tour.
NBC has several new shows debuting at midseason, including the highly hyped Broadway drama, “Smash.” Returning shows include “The Voice” and “30 Rock.”

Among the tidbits gleaned from NBC’s press tour session:

— Mariska Hargitay will return to “Law & Order: SVU” next season. “I’m having too much fun (to leave),” she told reporters in a pre-taped segment.
As for this season, her character will be getting a potential new love interest in Harry Connick Jr., who will appear in a four-episode arc as a new D.A. beginning Jan. 18. The two actors playfully flirted with one another before Hargitay announced that they had to leave to shoot a “sexytime scene.”

— “Community” fans can relax. The show has not been canceled, despite the fact that it is not on NBC’s midseason schedule. Greenblatt promised it will return in the spring.

— Greenblatt claimed he spend no time worrying about what kind of havoc new judge Howard Stern will wreak on “America’s Got Talent.” Insisting that Stern is taking the assignment very seriously, he said he won’t be “a shock-jock judge” and has no plans “to usurp the show and make it the Howard Stern circus.”

— The talk of Ryan Seacrest replacing Matt Lauer on the “Today” show is “premature,” according to Greenblatt. “It is our hope that Matt Lauer will stay on the show,” he said.

— Among the NBC shows that crashed and burned early this season, Greenblatt called the failure of “Prime Suspect” his “biggest disappointment of the fall.”